Display Field Description in a Text Box

  • Thread starter Thread starter DaveH
  • Start date Start date
D

DaveH

Hello

I would like to have a text box on my form that displays the field
description (entered in table design view) for the currently selected bound
control. I know it is already displayed in the status bar, but I would like
it in a text box too!

Any ideas?

Many thanks

Dave
 
The simplest approach would be to read it from the StatusBarText property of
the control on your form.

For example, if you have a text box named FirstName, with the appropriate
explanation in its Status Bar Text property, you could put another text box
on the form and set its Control Source to:
=[FirstName].[StatusBarText]

If you do want to read the Description property of the field in the table,
you can do that as:
=Currentdb.TableDefs("Table1").Fields("FirstName").Properties("Description")
However, that expression will error if the field has no description, so you
really have to use a custom function to retrieve the property and recover
gracefully if it errors. Here's an example of doing that:
http://allenbrowne.com/func-06.html
 
Dave

Are you saying that you wish to take up (valuable) screen space repeating
what is already showing in the status bar?

Here's an alternative -- put the text that you display in the status bar
into a ToolTip. That way, when a user hovers his/her cursor over the
control, the "description" pops up on screen but doesn't stay there, taking
up room.

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Office/Access MVP
 
Allen Browne said:
The simplest approach would be to read it from the StatusBarText property
of the control on your form.

For example, if you have a text box named FirstName, with the appropriate
explanation in its Status Bar Text property, you could put another text
box on the form and set its Control Source to:
=[FirstName].[StatusBarText]

If you do want to read the Description property of the field in the table,
you can do that as:

=Currentdb.TableDefs("Table1").Fields("FirstName").Properties("Description")
Click to expand...

You could get the description directly from the field in the form's
recordset, which would be more efficient:

=Recordset.Fields("FirstName").Properties("Description")

As you cautioned, you still have to deal with the error if the property
doesn't exist. This might work, cumbersome though it is.

=IIf(IsError(Recordset.Fields("FirstName").Properties("Description")),
Null,
Recordset.Fields("FirstName").Properties("Description"))

But a custom function is probably better.
 
Thats great,

Many thanks for your help!



Dirk Goldgar said:
Allen Browne said:
The simplest approach would be to read it from the StatusBarText property
of the control on your form.

For example, if you have a text box named FirstName, with the appropriate
explanation in its Status Bar Text property, you could put another text
box on the form and set its Control Source to:
=[FirstName].[StatusBarText]

If you do want to read the Description property of the field in the table,
you can do that as:

=Currentdb.TableDefs("Table1").Fields("FirstName").Properties("Description")
Click to expand...

You could get the description directly from the field in the form's
recordset, which would be more efficient:

=Recordset.Fields("FirstName").Properties("Description")

As you cautioned, you still have to deal with the error if the property
doesn't exist. This might work, cumbersome though it is.

=IIf(IsError(Recordset.Fields("FirstName").Properties("Description")),
Null,
Recordset.Fields("FirstName").Properties("Description"))

But a custom function is probably better.

--
Dirk Goldgar, MS Access MVP
Access tips: www.datagnostics.com/tips.html

(please reply to the newsgroup)
Click to expand...
 
Back
Top